Chapter Eleven
“(Nearly) A Week in the Life”
Saturday
November 15
While Albert Feinstein met his maker and Jack Bitsumi met his taker, while Shelby Moore was making her meeter and Albert's killer made himself neater, that very night of love and fright, of anger, impotence and flight, while murder lay its bloody hand upon that cold and northern land, and students screamed out while they dreamed, and nothing was quite what it seemed—
Evelyn shook her head rapidly from side to side, like a dog shaking off water. She was doing it again. The goddamned rhyming. This never happened to her when she was stoned, goddamn it. This only happened to her when she was—
Tripping.
"Claude, you bastard!" Evelyn screamed to the empty house. "What kind of shit did you give me? FUCK!"
Screaming always made Evelyn feel better. Now, this wasn't so bad, really. She only seemed to be in a low-level trip, the type that always makes you see motion out of the corners of your eyes. This was good, because Evelyn really had to think. She was probably in very deep shit, and it was imperative that she be able to think her way through it. What did they give you for decking a cop, anyway? Evelyn had no idea. Rape in the backroom of the police station for starters, she imagined, and probably a few cigarette burns to boot. If only she hadn't known what had happened to the Narc—or not a Narc, it now seemed he was not a Narc, a friend of Stephanie's through Mark, who on a lark and in the dark had now resolved to go embark to some town 'way up north called Nome in which his parents' loving home awaited him with open arms, and so they should not raise alarms if he'd be gone a day or two, a brief respite from Herschberg U.—
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
Evelyn pounded her head against the wall and continued to do so until it stopped. If the Narc, whatever his real name was anyway, hadn't told Elgin all about the cops beating him up and then lying about it (and what a lie, too! A bowling pin? I mean, get real!), and if Elgin hadn't told Stephanie, and if Stephanie hadn't told her, then she probably wouldn't have been quite so hostile to that pig she'd met in the corridor. And then he probably wouldn't have decided to hassle her. And then she probably wouldn't have been forced to punch the motherfucker.
Probably.
The motion again, just out of the range of her sight, the visual equivalent to a word on the tip of ones tongue. Ignore it, and it will go away, and damn Claude and the hallucination he rode in on for giving her this freaky shit. It hadn't even smelled like dope, now that she thought about it. In fact, with effort, Evelyn could almost think back through the haze clouding her mind to remember walking through the door and—
No, it hadn't been Claude at all. It had been Susan who had given her this crap. —Not Claude but Susan, vapid Sue, the acid queen of Herschberg U., the trippy girl with midnight hair who never seemed to have a care, whose eyes in permanent dilation, smile of strychnine jubilation, spoke of drug-induced elation—
Evelyn catapulted herself from the bed and stomped down the stairs in search of something to eat, under the assumption that if she pretended she had the munchies, she might then believe that she were stoned, and thus stop tripping. The refrigerator was empty, however, except for several quarts of frozen orange juice.
"Shit."
And now that motion again. God damn it. What she really needed, she decided, was fresh air. She marched out the front door and onto the peeling porch, forgetting that she had left her jacket upstairs on the bed, but she had not time even to notice the cold before she was frozen in thought and in body, staring into a pair of enormous silver eyes.
•
Brittany tossed uneasily in her waterbed and cursed the day she had decided to move into Hiawatha Towers. She was not a good sleeper at the best of times, and the past few days had hardly qualified. Even Jill's death, however, even Chris' rapidly declining sanity, even Janis' disappearance, even the disturbing news that she had received from Matilda the previous day, even—yes, even the strange delusions that had been plaguing her mind ever since the murder—even these could have been borne.
But the paper-thin walls of Hiawatha Towers—they were unbearable.
Tonight, for example. She had intended to go to sleep at eleven. Instead, she had been treated to an aural feast, a roster of her four neighboring tenants' activities all through the night. In her mind, they were listed something like this:
The New Tenant next door. Has been pacing back and forth, whistling, humming, and cracking knuckles since I came home. Is making some sort of minor mechanical adjustment on a musical instrument—possibly a harpsichord, most likely a piano. Never seems to sit down or shut up. Does not bode well.
The British émigré upstairs. Loud as usual. Went to bed—at last!—at midnight. Masturbated, but seemed unable to reach climax. What a damned pity. Screamed, once, some time later—in his sleep, one hopes. Whimpered at irregular intervals thereafter—in his sleep, one hopes. Is now snoring. Can't seem to do anything quietly.
Professor Morowitz next door. Brought someone I don't know home with her around 10:30. Couldn’t resist a peek: a woman, utterly unlike Jack, looked like an upper classman—maybe a grad student? They ordered pizza. Discussed Jack's running off to Alaska with Norbert. (Son-of-a-bitch. Who'd have thought old Norbert had it in him? Guy never even talks, how did he manage to seduce a professor? Visiting his family, my ass!) Pizza arrived; delivery boy sounded surprised and pleased at his tip (nice for a change; had been starting to worry about the delivery boy; Midwesterners lousy tippers). They chewed loudly. They drank (Beer? probably) loudly. They whispered for a while, an utterly uninteresting conversation—one wonders why they bothered to whisper it. They had sex. Loudly. On the couch, utterly barbaric. Shuffled to bedroom later, thank god. Can't hear Morowitz's bedroom very well. Are now either asleep or mercifully quiet.
The cop, Graves, upstairs. Tried to use telephone at least seventeen times between 10:30 and 11:15. Said "Hello? Hello?" and jiggled the receiver until I feared I'd go mad. Listened to Bach at a volume that he probably thought was considerate. Sat at his desk when record had finished. Went through nightly writing routine, as usual, with a scratchy fountain pen. Pen must have become blocked—swore at it a bit and then ran some water. Shook pills (pain relievers, in all probability, given the new neck brace, and where'd he find a black one, anyway? Basic black, very nice indeed. Rather vain, perhaps, are we, Mr. Graves, hmm?) out of plastic bottle, swallowed them down with a carbonated beverage in a screw-top bottle that had been in the refrigerator. Neglected to put the bottle back, or perhaps had done so while the lovebirds had been at it. Definitely neglected to put the pages he’d written into the loose-leaf notebook hidden under his mattress as he usually does. Funny, that. (Oh, but right, the neck brace. Probably in too much pain to want to deal with the mattress, poor dear.) Finally went to sleep. At two or so. At least he doesn't snore.
Wishing evil upon all of humanity, Brittany drifted off to sleep, only to be awakened a few hours later by the FBI agents pounding on her door. Later, Johnson would remark that the student in Hiawatha Towers Apartment 5 had behaved suspiciously during the search, but Riggs would silence him by snapping that the girl had clearly just woken up. She had sat on her bed, answering all of the woman Riggs’ questions about her neighbor the Inspector, while the two other agents had torn through her apartment, obviously looking for something. Or rather, Brittany thought, someone. And she was pretty sure she knew who. For if Brittany's behavior had come across as a tad peculiar to Agent Johnson, it was because she had spent the entire interview concentrating on neither bursting into hysterical laughter nor allowing Riggs to notice her glancing out of her balcony window, where the legs of Cecil Graves were dangling in full view.
•
"Holy shit!" Thump. Thump, rattle, CRASH! "Fuckin' God." Stomp, stomp, stomp. Thump.
Stephanie rolled over in bed and blinked at her alarm clock. 5:47 a.m.
"Ev' lyn?"
"Oh, shit, Steph, I'm glad you're up. You would not." Thump. "Believe." Thump. "The night I've had." Thump thump thump.
"Whatchadoin', Ev'lyn?"
"Looking for my goddamn cigarettes!" CRASH! "I know I left them somewhere." Rustle, crumple, thump.
"Thirronyerclosetfloor."
Thump.
"Oh, yeah. Thanks. So I went to Claude's last night to smoke some dope, and... Hey, the Narc's in Alaska, right?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"DOPE! DOPE! DOPE! DOPE! I smoke dope!"
"I don’t think he’s really a Narc, anyway." Stephanie pulled her pillow over her ears, although she had a strong suspicion that this was going to be one of those mornings during which Evelyn was not going to permit her to sleep. "He’s just a grad student." She had been dreaming about something, or not so much dreaming as reliving a memory.
"Sure, Steph. Who lives on an undergraduate hall of the crappiest dorm in Herschberg."
"Mbwh," Stephanie mumbled, pretending to fall back asleep in the hopes that Evelyn might get the hint and shut up and let her get back to what she was dreaming/remembering about. Evelyn, however, was not to be dissuaded. She ranted on, something about being at Claude and Sue’s, and why did she always have to tell Stephanie about this sort of stuff, anyway, when she knew that Stephanie didn’t take drugs and didn’t even, truth be told, really approve of them at all? And what was it she had been thinking about?
"...I didn't even notice until I'd had, oh, I don't know, at least six bowls of the shit..."
Six. Yes, that was right. There had been six of them there, because Jill had said that six was a number sacred to the Mother Goddess, or some such.
"She means nine," Brittany had muttered. "Humor her."
"I mean six," Jill had insisted.
Stephanie quite liked Jill, even if she did spell woman "womban," but she didn't know about all this mystical shit that many of Mark's friends were into. Chris and Jill, to be fair, were the only two who seemed to take it very seriously, but even Jens, who seemed otherwise a sensible sort, had a pack of tarot cards in his room, and Matilda described herself as "a recent convert to the irrational," whatever the hell that meant.
"Come on, Steph," Jill had urged her. "I really think you'll find it interesting. There's nothing to be afraid of."
Stephanie had been afraid, not of any sort of mystic power—Stephanie firmly believed that Mark's friends were over-imaginative, and that was all—but more of the participants themselves. This group of people Mark hung out with was weird, and she had just met them a few weeks ago, and she had not really got to know any of them yet, not really, and while some of them had been very nice about welcoming her into their circle, others...had not. And she didn't like the idea of being stuck in some sort of bizarre pagan ritual with them without Mark there. Mark hadn't liked the idea either.
"I still don't see why she couldn't have invited me," he had sulked. "Or Chris. I mean, Chris is into all that shit."
"She says it's only women."
"Yeah, right. You know, if I ever held anything in my room and said that only men were invited, Jill would be down my throat so fast..."
But so it had been, and Stephanie had attended, although she strongly suspected that she'd only been invited because Jill had needed a sixth. Certainly that must have been why Brittany, who was about as mystical as...well, as poor Elgin, for example, would have been present.
They had sat in a circle, the six of them: herself; Jill; Janis, with whom Stephanie had still felt uncomfortable back then, although Janis had always been perfectly nice to her; Matilda, a freshman Stephanie had only met once or twice before; Brittany, about whom the less was said the better; and Susan, someone Stephanie knew better as a friend of Evelyn's and who was, she thought, some sort of drug dealer.
The "vision" Jill had received—had claimed to have received, Stephanie quickly amended—had been taken seriously by no one but Chris, who hadn't even been there. He alone had truly believed that something was going to happen on the Ides of November. Even Jill herself had agreed that it was probably nothing, really. Janis, Brittany and Matilda all said that they hadn’t felt anything at all, and Susan had been so stoned out of her skull throughout that Stephanie had no doubts as to the source of anything she might have experienced.
As for Stephanie herself...well, it was hard to say. In retrospect, of course, it was easy to believe. But that it was all coincidence was certainly probable, and Stephanie was well aware of the fact that she tended toward the suggestible; she had always been easy that way, always eager to be...approved.
This did not, however, explain why one single moment from that evening had been playing over and over again in her mind all night, lifted by some trick of memory out of the entire night's events and elevated, emphasized, as if it had been treated with that invisible ink they had used as children, which only became visible months after it was used.
While Jill had gone into her trance-breathing (self-hypnosis? Stephanie had wondered. Mark would know), while Matilda and Janis had sat politely, like agnostics in a church, while the circuitry of Susan's mind had danced to a chemical tune, and while Stephanie herself had been trying to determine whether, in fact, she was feeling anything, Brittany's hand, clasped with her own, had suddenly gone as cold as ice.
Not cold for flesh. As cold, literally, as—
"—ice, silver ice, and it was breathing on me, Steph, I swear to God, it was the most vivid goddamned hallucination I've ever had!"
"Sounds awful," Stephanie mumbled, dutifully.
"When they got back from the Arb, I nearly killed the assholes. You know what it turned out that shit was? You know what those fuckers had me smoking? Guess."
"Belladonna. Shit, Evelyn, I don't know. Do you know what time it is?"
"Wolfsbane. Some fucking book of Susan's said that it was a 'mild hallucinogen,' and so they picked some up at that witch store in the city that Jill used to—" She stopped. "I’m sorry, Steph."
"‘'Sokay."
"They were using me as their fucking guinea pig! Some friends! I should've killed them; I really should have. Jim, with his 'hey, guys, I saw a wolf around the house.’ They even had a goddamned code set up. 'Look, guys, here comes a sucker.' The bastards!"
"Isn't wolfsbane poisonous or something?"
"Yeah, you see why I'm so pissed? Those assholes could have killed me! And then they came back and pumped me about the shit. I should have ripped their fucking necks out! And Claude said: 'hey, wow, it gives you hallucinations about wolves. That must be why it's called wolfsbane.' He was totally fucked up, kept nattering something about the Chrysler Building. Shit."
"Good night, Evelyn," Stephanie sighed.
"Shit, I'm sorry. I'll let you sleep now. I was just so pissed off." She climbed into bed, fully-dressed, as usual. "If that was a 'mild hallucinogen,'" she concluded. "I'm Doris fucking Day."
With that, Evelyn rolled over and was, apparently, asleep immediately. Stephanie lay awake a while longer. She had the strangest feeling that Brittany was in danger. Not for her life, but for her immortal soul.
•
Brittany had just managed to bring herself back to the verge of sleep when she was once more disturbed, this time by the sound of footsteps on the balcony above hers. She smiled to herself. Apparently, old Graves had finally caught on to the fact that the agents had left, and was now clambering back onto his balcony. Good for him. The man's arms must be cables. But...
But there were a lot of footsteps up there, and when Brittany looked at her clock, she realized that she had been asleep for some time. And, clawing back through her sleep-hazed memory, something was bothering her. There really had been something... unnatural about those bare and shaggy legs that she had believed to have belonged to Mr. Graves earlier in the evening, hadn’t there? They had been at a funny angle, surely, something that she hadn’t noticed during her interrogation, preoccupied as she had been with the romance of helping her neighbor—who seemed a decent enough fellow, really, all things considered—to elude the notice of those horrid Federal Agents. But if he’d been hanging by his arms from his balcony, as she had assumed, would his legs really have been at...quite that angle? Thinking back, Brittany thought not.
Squinting, Brittany fumbled for her glasses, shoved them on, and groped for the fuzzy pink bathrobe that made her look like a cruel caricature of a 1960's housewife. (Which was precisely the point: Brittany owned no item of clothing that did not make her look like a cruel caricature of something; Janis had put her finger on her sartorial sensibilities perfectly one day when she had shook her head and said: "I don't know, Brittany, I think that I like drag better when men do it," a comment which had risen Janis out of the vast masses of People Brittany Did Not Notice and into the semi-elite of Brittany's Closest Friends). She slipped on the matching pink bunny slippers and staggered blearily into her living room.
The legs were still there. And they were at the wrong angle.
He had tried to reach someone on the telephone. He had tried desperately, for a full forty-five minutes. And he had left what he had been writing on his desk, instead of hiding it away under his mattress, like he usually did.
"Oh," Brittany said, out loud. Another explanation—incorrect, as it happened—for Graves’ dangling feet had just occurred to her. "Oh, no." Mark, who not two days before had mentally classified Brittany as a garden-variety sadist, would have been deeply surprised at her reaction. She stared, appalled, at the legs, which were rapidly losing all of their comedic value and becoming instead something monstrous, horrific, wrong, took a shaky step forward, took a shaky step back, swallowed.
Then, with a deep breath, Brittany pulled the sliding door to her balcony open, marched out, and looked up to see what it was that her neighbor’s noose had caught on when he had set forth to make his final quietus.
The two male FBI agents she had met earlier stared back at her over the railing of the balcony above hers.
Between them, Cecil Graves: suspended at a contorted and lopsided slant, one arm twisted above his back at an angle no arm should surely ever find itself, the other wedged weirdly between his neck brace and his awkwardly jutting shoulder blade. Ribcage rising and falling unevenly, raggedly. Eyes half-open, glazed. Mercifully, in a deep state of shock.
Brittany, simultaneously thinking of crucifixions, roast chicken, and a singularly unpleasant high school experience involving gym class and a pair of rings one was supposed to flip around on, let her mouth fall open in an idiotic gape.
"Oh. My. God." she said. The faces of the FBI agents, looming above her, were joined by those of a uniformed cop, the newspaper boy, and a young man whom Brittany had never seen before, but who had clearly not been in the States very long.
"This doesn't concern you, Miss," the white agent told her. "Just go back inside and forget about it."
"Forget about what?" Brittany asked primly, stepping back inside. Being neighborly was one thing, but the Federal Government was quite another. Especially if this was one of their usual interrogation practices.
All right," she heard the white guy announce from upstairs, rather pompously. "On the count of three we get him up and over, right?"
"What?" This voice had an unfamiliar foreign accent. Must be the guy in the body paints. "Are you completely insane?" Despite the accent, his English was really very good, Brittany thought.
"Johnson, get his other arm."
"He has a broken neck, you assholes! You want to kill him? Call an ambulance!"
"Sir." This, Brittany was fairly certain, must be the uniform. "I’m sure they know what they’re doing, sir."
"But they can’t...you can’t..."
"Got a good hold on that arm, Johnson?"
"You can’t just..."
"Got it, Johnson."
Now wait just a minute, Brittany thought, with the surge of indignation endemic to compulsive eavesdroppers who, for once, cannot make sense of what they are overhearing. Which one is Johnson?
"What are you people, lunatics? Let go of him!"
"Sir..."
"Shut up, Riley. Listen, you incredibly incompetent shit-for-brain moron apes..."
"Get him out of here, Smithfield."
"Right, Johnson."
There was a thud from above, then the unmistakable sound of a scuffle. Brittany, who had been occupied with the problem of the two Johnsons, suddenly realized exactly what it was that the FBI agents were planning. She winced, burst into a scream of shrill laughter, and then ran into the bathroom in search of a tranquilizer, although she had already taken four that evening, to no effect.
"Werewolves!" the British gentleman upstairs screamed in his sleep. People were awakening. All over Hiawatha Towers, Brittany heard the first grumpy footfalls of people swinging themselves irritably out of bed.
"Okay! Okay!" the foreigner above her yelled. "Okay! Jeez, you don’t have to..."
"Right, Johnson. On the count of three. One..."
Brittany moaned and fumbled with the plastic bottle, but the pill had only just hit her palm when she heard the gasp, followed by the scream. She swore softly. There was no point now. Footsteps thundered overhead as the residents of the west side of Hiawatha Towers, acting as one organism, ran to their balconies to see what the commotion was all about.
"Werewolves!" the British gentleman upstairs screamed again. No way to tell, really, if he was awake or asleep.
"What the hell are you playing at, Johnson?"
"I couldn’t help it, Johnson. I don’t think his arm goes any further that way."
"Oh my God." Professor Morowitz’s voice. "What happened?"
"Do you mind, out there?" the woman with the big hair yelled. "My children are trying to sleep!" The woman with the big hair had a screaming fight with her common-law husband once every four nights. Brittany had never noticed her caring about noise pollution before.
"Mommy? Why is that man hanging like that?"
"Mr. Graves? Cecil? Are you all right?"
The cop’s name is Cecil? Brittany thought. She had always figured him for a Bill. Or maybe a Dan.
"Werewolves!"
"Listen, Cecil," one of the Johnsons upstairs said authoritatively. "This isn’t going to be so bad. We’re just going to flip you up and over, okay? And then we’ll take you to the hospital. But you’ve got to work with us here, you got that? Easy does it."
Cecil, as if to indicate that he had indeed registered this appeal to his sense of cooperation, shrieked in agony.
"This is ridiculous." Professor Morowitz. "Appalling. Who are you people?"
"Federal agents, ma’am. FBI."
"Werewolves!"
"Mr. Graves?" This was Graves’ next-door neighbor, a woman whose apartment was too far away—and whose habits too quiet—for Brittany to ever have taken much of an interest in her. "Mr. Graves? Are you all right down there? Can you speak?"
Obligingly, Graves cried out again, this time more of a whine, really, trailing off into a sick moan. Brittany closed her eyes, shuddered, and dry-swallowed her sedative.
"FBI?" Morowitz’s tone hovered somewhere between incredulity and contempt. "Let me see your identification."
"Mommy! Why is that man hanging like that?"
"Ladies, gentlemen." Smithfield. "There’s no need to panic. This situation is under control."
"Under control?" Professor Morowitz, glorious in her disdain. "I should hardly call this ‘under control.’"
"Ma’am, I assure you..."
"Werewolves!"
"Ladies, gentlemen, please..."
"Shelby, call 911. Now. Mrs. Hansen." Hansen? Oh, Graves’ neighbor. "Go and wake the super, if he’s not already up, and get him to bring a ladder to apartment...five, is it? Brittany? Brittany, are you awake down there?"
Brittany, who had been less than impressed with Professor Morowitz when she had had her for History 236 (Intellectual History of the Middle Ages I [From the Fall of Rome to the Eleventh Century]), now sidled almost shyly onto her balcony and looked over at her former lecturer with something approaching awe. She had already forgiven her for the hijinks on the couch.
"I’m here, Professor Morowitz," she said. "It is apartment five."
"You can’t flip him over like that," someone from the third floor suddenly called down. "That won’t work. You’d be better off pulling the cuffs through the rails..."
"No way," someone else up there said. "You’re gonna have to cut him down, is what you’re gonna hafta do."
"Who’s got a hacksaw?"
"Ladies and...ladies!" Agent Johnson yelled, realizing belatedly that the group he addressed was composed solely of women. "Ladies! This is a federal investigation. Return inside immediately."
"Mommy! Mommy, that man isn’t wearing any panties, mommy."
"Werewolves!" bellowed the Mad Brit.
"Will someone shut that asshole up?" Agent Johnson shrieked hysterically. "Shoot him if you have to, but shut him the fuck up!"
Responding to God knows what sudden impulse, Cecil screamed again. His legs jerked convulsively in the air, one foot narrowly missing Brittany’s nose. She flinched away.
"Who the hell do you people think you are, barging in like this and ordering people around like this?" the Woman With the Big Hair yelled.
"What do you mean, who the hell do we think we are?" Johnson yelled. "We’re the FBI!"
"It’s all right, folks!" Officer Riley called out cheerily. "They really are Federal Agents."
"We’re a big scary government organization, damn it! And when we tell you to go back into your apartments, you’re supposed to go back into your apartments!"
"Or what?" Professor Morowitz asked. "You’ll shoot us?" There was a pause, and then Brittany heard her mutter quietly: "Shelby, there’s a video camera on the floor of my closet. Maybe you’d better get it."
"I don’t care if you’re Holy Mary Mother a God!" the Woman With the Big Hair screamed. "I’m reporting this! I’m reporting you! I want to see your ID!"
"I want to see your ID too," someone from the third floor shouted.
"Yeah, let’s see some ID, assholes."
"All right, folks," Officer Riley called out. "Let’s all just simmer down, okay?"
Nobody paid any attention to him.
It was nearly an hour before the combined efforts of the bystanders, the police, the paramedics, and three of the Federal agents (the white Johnson had vanished the instant he had seen Riggs returning, mute and furious, to Hiawatha Towers; later, Johnson and Smithfield would dearly wish that they had followed his example) succeeded in removing Cecil Graves from his uncomfortable position, and by that time he was once more drifting in and out of consciousness, much to everyone's relief. It was, however, to be a number of days before the combined efforts of the police and the FBI agents would soothe the offended sensibilities of the residents of Hiawatha Towers.
Minnesotans are funny that way.
•
Sergeant David Harrison, vacillating between fury, concern and hilarity, knelt at the side of the board onto which they were strapping his partner. The morphine drip was already in place.
"Hey, Cecil," he was saying. "Did I ever tell you about the time I climbed Big Mountain to become a man?"
Cecil struggled to focus his eyes on the face which floated uncertainly in the void before him.
"Yes," he mouthed, at long last. "You did." He closed his eyes.
"Oh, yeah? Well, did I ever tell you that I actually fell off the mountain? No shit. I was—"
"Hey, officer, c’mon, now. Not a good time, okay?" The paramedic with the sandy moustache and the apologetic eyes gently moved Dave to the side. "No talking now. Bad medicine. All right?"
"Bad medicine?" Dave looked puzzled, but he backed away.
Thank you, Cecil mouthed silently to the paramedic with the sandy moustache, who smiled wearily back at him. The paramedic with the sandy moustache looked like he had not slept in days. He was fast on his way, in fact, to becoming the paramedic with the sandy beard. "Oh, Jesus, man, not you again!" was what the paramedic with the sandy moustache had said when he had first arrived at Hiawatha Towers. Cecil had liked him for that.
"I need to speak to the patient," Riggs said, elbowing her way past Dave on her way to the stretcher.
"Sorry," the paramedic with the sandy moustache said, without looking up. "It’ll have to wait."
"FBI." She flashed her ID in front of his face, and the paramedic, who was not a native Minnesotan, blinked, stared, and then vanished. Riggs leaned over the stretcher, smiling thinly. Cecil, who had phased out there for a moment, phased back in to discover that the face of the paramedic with the sandy moustache had mysteriously been replaced by the face of Special Agent Riggs. He found this curious, if not entirely unpleasant.
"Inspector," the face was saying to him. "You will no doubt be pleased to hear that you are no longer a suspect in the Feinstein killing. Many of your neighbors seem fairly well convinced that you were here at the time of the act; they all mention something about Bach."
Cecil blinked.
"Also, we have uncovered new evidence which puts the matter in a somewhat different light." Agent Riggs delicately flicked a strand of Cecil's remaining hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. "I do hope you will forgive us for the...inconvenience?"
Cecil was marveling at the cinematic effect of faces looming over him as the morphine began to take effect. My God, he thought. It really does look like that.
"Just one more little thing," the fish-bowl-lens-distorted face of Riggs told him sweetly. "This case is becoming rather complex. I hope you can appreciate that it has become an undeniably Federal matter."
"Now hold on..." Dave began.
"Oh, I realize that you are Herschberg's finest," Riggs insisted, even more sweetly. Carcinogenically sweetly, in fact.
With a sinking feeling, Dave remembered where he had heard that tone of voice recently. He had used it.
"...we will certainly continue to work together. Just so long as you realize that we simply cannot tolerate any further...obstruction, ne’est ce pas?" She leaned over, way over, bent her face down low and pressed her lips to Cecil’s ear.
"You guessed right, you know," she whispered to him. "I do sleep in the nude."
Dave hadn’t thought that it was possible for someone in a medical state of shock to blanch. He had been wrong. Cecil went as white as a sheet. His lips moved soundlessly. Riggs straightened and smiled at him with all of the brilliance of the lights above an operating table, and with equally natural warmth. She winked conspiratorially at him.
"Maybe we can find the two of you some prints to dust for."
"Hey!" Dave said. "Bite me."
"You read..." Cecil croaked. "You read..."
Riggs curled a hand around his cheek, although it would have been impossible for him to pull away, and kissed him. It was a long time before she finished. When she straightened, Cecil was staring at her, breathing shallowly. She held his gaze, dropped it, glanced down, smiled, and then, almost primly, reached down to close his bathrobe.
"A word of advice," she said. "To both of you. Stay in your league."
The paramedic with the sandy moustache coughed.
"Um, ma’am," he said. "If the, uh...Federal Government is finished with my patient?"
"Will he walk?" Riggs asked flatly, accepting without a glance the purse Agent Smithfield was holding out for her.
"Will...he..." the paramedic stammered. "Well, his, uh, spinal cord doesn’t seem to have sustained any..."
"Well." Riggs said. "Lucky man." She shook her head, winked again at Cecil, and strode off, Smithfield trailing behind her.
"I’m still not understanding the courtship rituals of this country," Dave said, ignoring the paramedic’s attempts to shoulder him out of the way. "Sometime you’ll have to explain....Cecil?"
Cecil had begun, very weakly, to sob.
"Cecil, Cecil, Cecil," Dave sighed. "Hey, come on, man. Remember what you’re always telling me. It’s all material. Right? It’s all material."
•
Sunday
November 16
"Oh, Norbert," Jack breathed, staring at the perennial dusk of an arctic November through the picture window. "It's beautiful!" He reached out, and Norbert stepped quickly to the side. The fifth time Jack had forgotten why he was going to Alaska, Norbert had simply blasted him, and he was beginning to think that perhaps he’d hit just a bit too hard.
"Jack," he said, keeping a respectful distance. "We're going to be having company soon."
"Company?" Jack looked hurt. "We can't…we can't be alone?"
"Later, Jack."
"But…”
"Later, Jack." Norbert took a deep breath and massaged his temple. "Some...friends of mine are going to want to talk to you, all right?"
"They're friends of yours?"
"That's right."
"Great." Jack smiled, then suddenly frowned, worried. "They'll like me, won't they?"
"Sure, Jack." Norbert was beginning to have an uneasy feeling about this entire affair. It had all been fine until he had been forced to go find Jack at the bus station; that had not been In The Plan. Who would have expected such a brilliant bio-chemist to have such a befuddled mind?
And then there had been the Joplin girl.
She had been sitting on the floor of the Greyhound terminal, smoking a cigarette, and at first she hadn’t recognized him. He was, after all, hardly dressed in Herschberg style: his Italian loafers alone, he thought, had probably cost more than the entire Joplin clan made in a year, if the way Janis habitually dressed was any indication, and she surely wouldn’t associate him with the slim briefcase he now carried. More to the point, however, was one of the many talents for which, in certain circles, Norbert was most valued: his uncanny unremarkability.
After the Joplin girl’s gaze had flicked over him twice without registering the slightest glimmer of interest or recognition, he had begun to relax. But the third time Janis looked in his direction, Norbert saw by the way that her brow first furrowed, then cleared, that luck was not going to be with him. Not tonight.
"Oh," she had exclaimed then. "It’s you."
"Janis," he said.
"Yeah, hi, how are you?" She couldn't remember his name, that much was clear. "What're you doing here?"
"I'm meeting a friend. My parents need me at home, so I have to go to the airport. I'll be gone for a few days. You?"
"Really? Where's home?"
"Nome. Alaska." He had been searching the station for Jack, not paying attention. All the same, how could he have missed the way she had changed the subject on him?
"Really, Alaska? You never told us that." She was smiling now, on her feet. "That's great. What's it like, living in Alaska?"
"Dark," he had said, spotting Jack across the terminal. "Excuse me..." and that was when the two of them had collided slightly, knocking her tickets out of her hand. He had bent to help her pick them up, and that was when he had seen the words "End of the Line, Utah."
Utah.
"Going to Utah?" Norbert asked casually, and he saw the way her face darkened. She glanced down at her tickets, then back to him.
"Yes." A glance over his shoulder. "Say, isn't that Professor Bitsumi over there?"
This time, he noticed.
"I do believe it is," he mused. She moved for the tickets, but he held them away, under the pretense of studying them closer. "End of the Line. That's a funny name for a town."
"It is, isn't it? That’s, um...kind of why I’m going there." In response to his raised eyebrow, she had shrugged, tossed off an embarrassed little laugh. "It’ll sound stupid, I’m sure. It’s just a kind of...childhood dream of mine. I saw the town in an atlas when I was a little kid, and ever since then I’ve always had this sort of fantasy about walking into a Greyhound station and saying, ‘gimme a ticket to End of the Line.’" A drag on the cigarette. "Pretty silly, I know."
"Not at all." Norbert was shaken. He had no idea whether or not she had just told him the truth. He simply couldn't tell. It was the first time he had ever encountered such a thing. Janis, perhaps sensing his dismay, sighed.
"Look," she said. "Um...if you could, you know, not tell people about this? I mean, back at Herschberg. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving, and I’d really rather they not know where I’ve gone. It’s not...it’s just that I really need to get away from everything for a while, and I don’t want people, you know, calling me or trying to reach me to find out if I’m okay. I am okay, but I don’t want to deal with people asking me if I am. I need to be alone for a while. Do you understand what I’m saying?"
Norbert had smiled at her, a rare ghost of a smile.
"You can trust me," he said.
"You know, I do?" She sounded surprised. "We've never really talked much, but somehow I do trust you."
Jack had spotted him now and was waving frantically from across the terminal. Norbert ignored him. He felt that this was important, but he was damned if he understood how. He still couldn't get a handle on the girl. It was like trying to read a blank page. He looked into her eyes.
"You do not trust many people, do you?"
"Oh, I trust Mark, you know, but it's not fair, I think, to always burden him with everything, especially now, you know, when we're..."
This was no good. He was pushing too hard, and she was beginning to babble. He looked away.
"And then there's Chris. I love Chris, I do, but he’s... oh, I don't know quite how to say this. He's—"
"Weak," Norbert said.
Janis stared at him. "Yes!" she said. "Yes, exactly. You do understand."
"Norbert!" Jack, calling him. "Norbert!"
There had been no time; they were running late as it was. Norbert had turned to Janis, caught her gaze, held it.
"You don't want to go to Utah," he said. "You want to go back to Herschberg. You want to go back to Herschberg and wait until I return. We will talk then. Do you understand?"
""Yeah," Janis replied. "I know what you mean, I think. But, um, Norwood..."
Close enough, he thought.
"Janis."
"I really appreciate what you're saying, but I do want to go to Utah. Really. I know it sounds like just an escape, but it's not really."
"Norbert!"
Janis had glanced over to Jack Bitsumi, and then back at him. A grin was slowly spreading across her face, a conspiratorial grin. Norbert stared at her in dismay. What the hell was this about?
"‘My family in Alaska needs me,’" she snorted.
"Janis..." he began, but now Jack was heading towards them, looking befuddled and confused and desperate, and Norbert didn’t think it would be a good idea, somehow, for the Joplin girl to get too close a look at him.
"Norbert!"
She gave him a quick hug.
"Your friend," she said. "Don’t worry about it. We'll talk when we both get back, all right? And don't worry about me." She dropped her cigarette onto the floor and crushed it out with the toe of her sneaker. "I'm really glad I ran into you here."
No, there had been no time. And his orders didn’t concern her anyway. But now, in the cold arctic twilight, Norbert suddenly felt very, very nervous.
•
Monday
November 17
Sheriff Jennifer Little Bear was waving her arms in agitation when she left the hospital room.
"You try and talk some sense into him!" she yelled at Dave, who put down the magazine he had been reading. "Go on! Just try it!"
"All right," Dave said.
"There is no reasoning with the man! He's impossible!"
"I'll talk to him," Dave said. He stood up.
"Just try to talk to him! He's gone utterly and completely mad. Just try it!"
"I am!" Dave slipped past her and walked through the door and into the hospital room. Cecil did not look particularly insane, but Dave had learned that was often difficult to go by appearances in such matters. He decided to adopt a friendly, non-confrontational posture and utilize his excellent bedside manner. Dave had often been complimented on his bedside manner.
"You look really awful!" he chirped. "No, I mean it. You really look like shit!" He grinned. "Do they expect you to live?"
Dave had often been complimented on his bedside manner; this had all been before he had learned about sarcasm.
"Have a seat," Cecil sighed. He attempted to gesture towards the chair, found that he had nothing to gesture with that was not firmly immobilized, and glowered at the wall.
"Thanks." Dave sat. "They tell me you’re lucky to be alive."
"Funny. I don’t feel it. Lucky, that is."
"So what isn’t broken?"
"I'm not sure. They keep telling me, but I can't seem to remember. It doesn't seem important somehow. Or maybe that's just the morphine."
'That shit'll kill you, you know."
"There are worse ways. And I've been thinking," Cecil added dreamily. "Morphine really gets a very bad name, but I've discovered that it enhances intuitive activities to a remarkable degree."
"That's what you said about pain, Cecil."
"Morphine is nicer than pain. Did you come here to talk some sense into me?"
Dave decided to take a subtle, diplomatic approach.
"Yeah."
"You didn't, say, just come to visit to tell me that you want me to get well soon and to show me that you care about me, or anything like that, by any chance?"
"No." Dave stared at him in honest bewilderment. "Why would I want to do a thing like that?"
Cecil closed his eyes. "Talk," he said. "Sense."
"Well, I understand that you plan on solving this case during your sick leave."
"Yup."
"Without forensics."
"Yup."
"Without access to evidence."
"Yup."
"Even though you’re officially off the case."
"Yup."
"In the hospital."
"If necessary."
"Flying high on morphine."
"For as long as possible."
"This has become a whatjamacallit for you, hasn't it?"
"No, Dave. I have no whatjamacallits."
"A grudge match."
"Yup." Cecil opened his eyes reproachfully. "I thought you were here to talk sense into me, Dave. All you seem to be actually doing is asking me a series of incomplete sentences, all of which can be answered with the affirmative. I'm rather disappointed."
"You know," Dave said, "I’ve been seeing a lot of movies lately."
He paused. Cecil waited. Dave waited longer.
"Movies." Cecil finally said.
"Yeah. And in the movies I’ve been seeing, there’s always this scene where the cop’s boss takes him off the case, and he says something like ‘we’ll see about that,’ and—"
"Yeah, okay, Dave. I see movies too. What’s your point."
"Well, like, those cops? They spend the rest of the movie doing things like getting into car chases, and jumping off of buildings, and running around corners shooting at bad guys..."
"Dave—"
"The point being, active things."
"Dave—"
"The point being, I don’t really see how you can do any of that stuff. Seeing as how you’re..."
"In traction?"
"A cripple."
Cecil closed his eyes.
"Oh," said Dave, after a long silence. "I just missed one of those tact things you’re always telling me about, didn’t I."
"Yes, Dave. You did." Cecil took a deep breath. "Listen. There’s a list of names on that table..." He moved to gesture, thought better of it. "To your right."
"My right?"
"Towards the windows. I want to speak to all of the people on that list. Most of them are students. I’d like you to find them and get them to come here to talk to me. Do you think you can manage that?"
"How?"
"How what?"
"How am I supposed to do that, Cecil? I can’t say it’s police business, ‘cause it’s not. And I can’t—"
"Think," Cecil said. "Of something." He sighed. "Hercule Poirot never has these problems."
"Who?"
"Nothing. Someone who is never in car chases either. No, never mind, Dave. Forget it. Just see if you can get them over here, okay?"
"Sure." Dave shrugged. "You know, if you didn't want people to read your journal, you should never have left it on your desk."
"The next time," Cecil gritted, "that my apartment is going to be broken into at five in the morning, I shall endeavor to have a premonition to that effect and hide my papers. All right?"
"Where?"
"What?"
"Where would you hide them? 'Cause under the mattress is really no good. That was the second place she looked." Cecil moaned and closed his eyes.
"She read my entire journal?" he whispered.
"Yeah. Do you really think that my 'ingenuousness has ceased to be endearing and become, at times, intolerable,' Cecil?"
"Absolutely," Cecil replied, without a moment’s hesitation. "And I think that we need to have a little talk about the importance, in this country, of respecting others’ privacy and not reading their private—"
"Oh, I didn’t read it. Riggs read it to me. Out loud. I think she meant for it to upset me, but it didn't. Know why?"
There was no response.
"Because I don't even know what 'ingenuousness' means!”
There was still no response.
"Cecil? You haven’t died or anything, have you?"
"Alas, Dave, no. I haven’t. I’ve just been thinking. I’ve had a lot of time to do that over the past couple of days. And I’ve come to the conclusion that asking questions that begin with the interrogative "why" is usually little more than a pointless exercise in self-pity. But nonetheless, there is something that’s been bothering me, that I hope you can clear up." Cecil took a deep breath. "Why," he said, "in hell did the Feds think that I, of all people, had killed Albert Feinstein?"
"Oh." Dave said. "That's easy. ‘Cause he broke your nose. Motive: revenge. Means: standard issue revolver. Opportuni—"
"But he didn’t."
"Well, sure we know that, Cecil," Dave beamed. "But I remembered this time. I know you think that I don’t pay attention to your lectures, but I do, Cecil, I really do, and I remembered that thing you said about the proper roles of the masculine and feminine here in the States, and about how terribly embarrassing it would be for people to find out that you’d been beaten up by a girl, and how if at all possible you’d like me not to mention it. So—"
"So you let them arrest me for murder."
"Yeah. Well, I did try to warn you first, so you could get away, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough." Dave grinned with pride. "But they asked me questions the whole night about you, Cecil, and I never once let on. And I didn’t tell them that you were hanging there right outside the window, either." He settled back in his chair, self-satisfaction writ large over every aspect of his being. Cecil stared at him.
"You—" he began.
"You weren’t dressed." Dave said. "See? I remembered that lecture about nudity. And just in time, too, ‘cause if that had been me, I sure would’ve wanted them to find me. But. Customs differ."
"Dave?" Cecil said.
"Yeah?"
"Get the hell out of here. Please. Now."
Dave shrugged.
"Okay." He picked up Cecil’s list from the table near the windows. "I’ll go tell Sheriff Little Bear that I couldn’t talk any sense into you."
•
Tuesday
November 18
"Inspector Graves."
Cecil's first impression of Brittany Clairmont was one of recognition. When he was younger, there had been some ghastly novel he had read in which a particular character was consistently described in the same terms: stern, merciless eyes; a warm, compassionate smile; and a straight nose acting as a rudder to steer between the two. It had been a description that had irritated Cecil, more for its sheer repetition than for anything else, but he was reminded of it now. Miss Clairmont was the converse: her mouth was a thin, unfeeling smirk; her eyes enormous, magnified by her lenses, brimming with emotion. Another difference was that Brittany Clairmont had very little nose to speak of.
On second thought, Cecil realized that the reason he had recognized her so readily was that she was a neighbor of his.
"Ah, Miss Clairmont," he said. "We are neighbors."
"Oh, yes, Inspector," Brittany swooped through the doorway and into the room. Her movement was alarming, kinetic italics. "I've admired your exquisite taste in music for many, many nights now. If I may say so, Inspector, I am particularly fond of that recording of the Goldberg Variations which you so frequently set your turntable to play on infinite—"
"Please. Call me Cecil."
"Why?" the girl asked. "Is that your name?" Then she let out the most awful laugh Cecil had ever heard. It reminded him of someone retching up fragments of glass.
"Have…have a seat," he urged. It had suddenly occurred to him that this young woman might very well have been one of the spectators of his ignominious dangling act, and the idea was making him slightly queasy. Or maybe that was the morphine.
"I wanted to talk to you..." he began.
"Oh, I know." Brittany fixed him with a look of pure affection. "Your delightful partner told me all about it, and I couldn't help noticing that I was first on your list. I'm flattered, Inspe…Cecil. Really I am." She fumbled in her purse and removed a small plastic medicine bottle, slammed hard against the child-proof cap, twisted violently, and shook three small yellow pills into her open palm before noticing Cecil’s intense interest. She stopped.
"I’m sorry," she said. "Do you need to see my prescription?"
"No, that’s..." Cecil had never before seen anyone under the age of forty attack an apparently legitimate prescription bottle in quite that expert a fashion. "That's quite all right. This isn’t police business, and I’m off-duty." Brittany smiled brittly at him and tossed the three small yellow pills down her throat. Without water. Cecil wondered just how long she had been taking those things.
The pills seemed to have an immediate effect on the girl. She lowered herself into the chair and actually sat. Still. Waiting, with one eyebrow raised.
"I was hoping," he began again, "that you might be able to tell me something about Jill. What she was like. What—"
"Blackmail." Brittany said. Cecil stared.
"You found my check among Jill's belongings," she explained. "It was for a rather large sum of money. You assumed, because you’ve been reading Agatha Christie lately, that Jill was a blackmailer, although what you could possibly believe I would have done that would be so heinous as to warrant blackmail is really quite beyond me." She let out a peal of that horrible laugh. "And really," she said. "Even if Jill had been blackmailing me, I would still hardly murder her."
"No, you’re mistaken," Cecil told her. "I didn’t have you pegged as the murderer."
"Really? Ought I be flattered or insulted, I wonder."
"Neither."
"Quite true." She smiled perfunctorily at him. "Then it must be the abortion you wanted to ask me about. Although you know," she lowered her voice confidingly. "That’s not at all in genre. Christie would never write about something so crass as an abortion."
Cecil wanted badly to shake his head, but his neck brace wouldn’t allow it. "What?" he asked, feebly. This interview was not going as planned. In fact, it was all beginning to seem like some sort of feverish dream.
"I am sorry. I’m throwing you off course. Why don’t you go right on ahead with the question you meant to ask me."
Cecil sighed. "I was," he admitted, "going to bring the conversation around—very subtly and cleverly, mind you—to Jill’s financial situation in order to find out if you would volunteer that you had been lending Jill any money."
"Because of the check."
"Yes."
"And because I’m her friend, and have money to spare."
"Yes."
"And then you were going to see if I’d be a loyal friend and lie to you, or if I’d betray the poor girl’s confidence by telling you that she was pregnant."
"Yes."
"Even though, of course, you already knew that she was from the coroner’s report."
"Yes."
"And because the check was for a suggestive amount. Just about what Planned Parenthood charges for a D&C."
"Yes."
"So there we are!" Brittany chirped. Already, her sedatives seemed to be wearing off. Although she was still seated, one of her legs, primly crossed over the other, had begun to jiggle back and forth. "Blackmail out; abortion in. Was there a third theory? I really would so love to hear it if there was, even if it has now become irrelevant."
"No third theory," Cecil lied.
"Liar. Now, I suppose you want to know who the father was, do I have this in the right order?"
As in all dreams, Cecil was finding that this interview became easier to understand with time. And that he could play, too.
"You aren't going to tell me who the father is," he sighed. "Even though you know."
"Right again. You are smart. Although, I really don't know who the father was."
"Liar," Cecil said. Brittany smiled at him and shrugged. She then rose from her chair and began an in-depth examination of the hospital room's decor, or lack thereof.
"I like you, Inspector," she told him. "It is a pity that there had to be a murder to bring about this delightful exchange."
"Miss Clairmont..."
Oh, please. Call me Brittany." She laughed again, but this time it was a mercifully muted version. "It is my name."
"Very well…"
"Has the second body been found yet, Cecil?" She peered critically at the curtains. "Or have you still only a blood type?"
"Young lady..."
"Yes, I do listen at doors, if that's what you were going to ask." It had been. "And I keep a pair of binoculars under my bed. Have you any idea yet why the killer cut off the fingers of her left hand?"
"Right hand," Cecil said, in spite of himself. Brittany froze in mid-scrutiny of his bedside table, and stared at him. Cecil found himself wishing that she had been drinking at that moment, just so he could have seen her choke.
"That's impossible," she said flatly. "You must be mistaken."" She said it with such force that for a second, Cecil believed her.
Of course, he thought. It was the left hand. How silly of me.
He shook himself, then gasped as one of his dislocated shoulders ground in its socket. It did the trick, though: the momentary conviction passed.
"Why?" he asked. "Why must I be mistaken?"
Brittany sat down in the chair again, weakly, and stared into her lap. For a moment there, Cecil almost liked her.
"Why?" he demanded. He put the authoritative edge in the interrogative for good measure. Cecil was quite a master of the authoritative edge. Unfortunately, the authoritative edge was the verbal equivalent of a slap across the face, and in Brittany's case, it acted much as a slap would: it restored her normal personality. Cecil thought this was a damned shame.
"Why, I'm sure that I wouldn't know," she sighed, and giggled to herself. But then, as if she had suddenly been charged with a lethal voltage of electricity, she leaned forward and stared at him.
"Don't pay any attention to me," she hissed. "Just listen to me. Talk to Matilda. Matilda knows something. Talk to Matilda. Matilda Schreiber. Ask her about the second body."
And then the electricity was gone. Brittany leapt from her seat and began pacing the room.
"It has been a pleasure, Inspector Graves," she said. "If there is ever anything I can help you with, be sure to give me a call, will you? I am invariably home, you know. Invariably." She ran a finger along the top of the door jam, examined it, and frowned to herself.
"No," Cecil said. "No. I think that will be all. For now." This had not gone at all the way he had planned, he thought. Hercule Poirot never had interviews like this.
As if he had spoken out loud, Brittany smiled at him.
"Agatha Christie never wrote a character quite like me, though," she said.
"No," Cecil replied. Don't think about it, just go with it. "You're more like something out of Dickens."
Brittany's smile disappeared. She threw him a long, mean, calculating glare. Cecil felt oddly relieved. For the first time since she had walked in, he felt that she did not hate him.
"Be seeing you," Brittany muttered. When she reached the door, Cecil called:
"Brittany? Miss Clairmont?" She turned. "Are you right-handed?"
"Of course," she said. But she was lying. And he knew it.
Talk to Matilda...
•
Wednesday
November 19
"Yesterday," Cecil told Dave. "I had the strangest interview I have ever had. Ever. In my life. It was like a dream."
•
"It was like a dream," Stephanie told Evelyn. "But it was a memory. But it was a memory highlit, if you know what I mean. And I don't know what it meant. I just don't get it at all."
•
"I just don't get it at all," Alan told Jens in the snack bar. "Why would anyone want to murder Albert? I mean, no one even liked the guy, right? People no one likes don't get murdered. They just get ignored. I mean, if someone who no one even likes can be killed like that, then, man, I'm, like, afraid to go out of my room."
•
"I'm, like, afraid to go out of my room, you know?" the freshman who lived down the hall from Janis and Jill was saying. "Everyone is. People are scared."
•
"People are scared," Elgin informed Brittany. "Because people are fundamentally irrational." He puffed contentedly at his unlit pipe. "So far, after all, there have only been two people killed, and their deaths are clearly connected—boyfriend and girlfriend."
"Logical fallacy, darling," Brittany sighed. "Just because their lives were connected does not mean that their deaths were connected. You are proceeding from a poor premise."
"True enough, dear girl," Elgin conceded. "Will you permit me to postulate, however, that it is only a matter of time before the police, or somebody, find a connection linking the deaths of Jill and Albert?"
"Postulate all you like," Brittany said. "I was merely pointing out that if you must consider logic the be-all and end-all of all discussion, than it is at least in good form, if nothing else, to keep your argument within the bounds of said logic."
"Well," Elgin snapped, more as a way of speaking than as a reflection of any real irritation. "I happen to believe that a connection will be found."
"You take it on faith?"
"If you like. I take it on faith. The connection will be found, sooner or later."
•
"The connection will be found sooner or later, Christian," Brittany whispered. Chris, huddled in bed, stared at her.
"The trees have stopped," he said.
"Speak English, darling. The trees have stopped doing what?" It had been difficult to gain entry to Christian's room. Brittany had finally managed it by claiming to be the forces of darkness, a claim so utterly absurd that even Christian had been forced to admit that she must be harmless and let her in.
"Stopped...I don't know how to describe it. Stopped being after me." He had not eaten in nearly a week, and his eyes looked enormous within his hollowed face. "They stopped when you came in. How did you do that?"
"The trees and I have an understanding," Brittany told him solemnly.
"Really?"
"Really." She turned to the window. "This man is under my protection," she announced dramatically. "I forbid you to assault him. Trouble him no more!" She waved her hands in a complex pattern and then looked up.
"There you are. They won't bother you again."
"Can...can you teach me to do that?"
"Why? My protection isn't good enough for you? Greedy little swine."
Chris flinched as if struck, and then looked up suspiciously.
"Are you shitting me, Brittany?"
"Of course I am, darling. Now will you please listen to me? I see the pattern because I know everything about you. The police do not know everything about you. They may not know anything about you. But chances are that they will, soon enough, and unless I am very much mistaken, you could easily find yourself a prime suspect. Now, I would suggest that at the very least, you could put in an effort to make yourself seem less suspicious. You could leave your room, for example."
"Brittany, I can't. You don't know..."
"Jill's body was found in her room. She may have been murdered in her room, for all we know. Albert was killed in his new room. Janis was last seen in her own dorm. Christian, what makes you think that you are safe here?"
"Well..."
"Have I ever led you astray, dear lad?"
"You told me you could talk to the trees."
"Aside from that?"
"Well..." Chris considered, then blurted. "But you must know something about the trees, though, Brittany. This isn't the first time I've seen you do something like that."
"Christian, I assure you. If I calm angry vegetation by my step, it is an inborn talent, and nothing I can teach to you."
Chris nodded, then looked up.
"Do you think Janis is dead, too?" he asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't." She picked at the afghan on Chris' bed. "If you ask me to explain that, Christian, I shall be very annoyed."
"Brittany?"
"Yes?"
"Have you had any...dreams lately?"
Brittany began to braid the tassels on the blanket.
"No," she said firmly.
Chris glanced at her. It was rare for Brittany to ever sit like this, positioned in such a way as to allow anyone to see the eyes behind her glasses. Mark claimed that he had seen her actually switch seats to avoid this very juxtaposition. Without the artificial magnification of her lenses, Brittany's eyes were tiny, sunken, almost expressionless, undercut by purple pools and laced with lines. She looked exhausted.
"Do you think that I killed Jill?" Chris asked, suddenly.
Brittany looked at him, opened her mouth to respond, and chuckled. She took a deep breath, looked at him again, and started to laugh. Then she collapsed weakly against the wall, shaking with uncontrolled mirth.
Chris decided that was probably a no.
•
Thursday
November 20
One week had gone by since the Ides of November, and Herschberg University slept uneasily, awaiting the next catastrophe.
The Poetess' weekly suicide attempt passed virtually unnoticed.
Mark and Stephanie, in a flash of insight undoubtedly sent from some divine power, realized that there was no reason why they could not be miserable together. Evelyn was greatly relieved, as were all of Mark’s housemates.
Chris left his room.
Gradually, the student body as a whole began to relax. Doomsayers saw this as a bad sign. Surely, they thought, vigilance was a necessary evil, a protection without which the campus would be once more thrown into darkness.
But darkness does not care about vigilance. If anything, vigilance merely attracts its attention.
Whether in respect to the American tradition of Thanksgiving, or—far more probably—due to sheer coincidence, there would be no more deaths in the town of Herschberg until the Winter Solstice.
•